YouTube is doubling down on its video moderation policy

Well-Known Member

YouTube has been under quite a bit of crossfire regarding its content and moderation practices and enforcement lately. The latest scandal, of course, revolving around a recent Logan Paul video, in which the YouTuber showed footage of a dead body.

It's no secret that the platform's automated moderation algorithms are not and can't really feasibly be perfect, letting the occasional adult, copyrighted or inappropriate content slip though the cracks. Most such cases, however, have very limited reach and can't even measure with the backlash generated by Paul's video, since he is part of the YouTube top 5% of creators.

As you can imagine, the video platform takes this list and the content it generates pretty seriously, since it gets directly marketed as prime advertising real estate for interested third parties. Many of whom have been pulling back some significant ad funds lately. In an effort to combat this, YouTube will be introducing a new team of 10,000 employees to work alongside AI and manually moderate and approve each video in the Google Preferred creator program.

While this might remedy advertiser relationships in the short run, such a move could also put the platform in jeopardy, polarizing both its creators and users even further on the growing issues of censorship, acceptable content and demonetization.

In other, distinctly lighter YouTube news, a recent dissection of the latest YouTube Android app code reveals that the company is making major progress on the Dark Mode, initially promised last Fall. Most of the player UI is already finished and dormant within the APK. The inspection also hints that the dark theme will eventually extend to the entire app interface, not just the video page and the player.

This is potentially great news for most every OLED user out there for power saving reasons. Not to mention, many people enjoy the increased perceivable contrast that comes with a dark background and would also appreciate a less eye straining experience for night-time video consumption, regardless of display technology. Last, but not least, users can also look forward to a more convenient swipe gesture for closing YouTube ads.